


Question & Answer

by whatdoyouthinkmyjobis



Series: Hunters on the Hellmouth [40]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural
Genre: Awkward Flirting, Character Death, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, Crying, Episode: s07e10 Bring on the Night, F/M, Hospitals, Jealousy, Kissing, Minor Character Death, Plotty, Research, Season/Series 07, Stressed Buffy, Supportive Dean, Supportive Giles, Teenagers, Torture, Training, Vampires, Whining, episode rewrite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-14 07:34:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10531833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatdoyouthinkmyjobis/pseuds/whatdoyouthinkmyjobis
Summary: With more Potentials arriving every day, Buffy has to turn them from scared, arrogant kids into mini-slayers.





	

**Author's Note:**

> AN: This chapter was inspired by events in BTVS 7.10 “Bring On the Night.”
> 
> Warnings: Some torture, gore, death

Dean rubbed his eyes, but the discharge papers in front of him were still blurry. His head featured its own drummer on hour twelve of a solo. When had he slept last? Sunday? No, Saturday. Even then, Buffy kept waking up with nightmares every few hours.

“There a cafeteria here?” he asked the nurse.

She paused and glared at him with bleary eyes; she was probably on fumes, too. “What do you need the cafeteria for? She’s leaving,” she said, pointing at Willow sitting blindfolded and stiff with worry in a wheelchair.

Dean grinned at her bad bedside manner. “Point me in the right direction, and I’ll bring you some coffee.”

His charm won out against her exhaustion as she tilted her head to the side with a smirk. “Down the hall. Take the elevator to B. Left at the second hallway.”

Willow had to hold his coffee as he pushed her through the parking lot to the waiting, crowded Impala. He’d gotten up before dawn to fetch two more Potentials from the bus station before picking up Willow, who didn’t seem too happy with his presence.

“ _Everyone_ is busy?” she asked again.

“Gotta work to pay for the sudden houseful. I know we’re not BFFs, but I’m what you got, Red. Everybody wanted to be here, trust me.”

“That’s not what I – sorry…What about Giles?” she asked, as Dean, protecting her head with his hand, guided her into his car.

“Oh, yeah, I forgot about him.”

“Really?”

“No! He’s out all day picking up girls. In the come-with-me-if-you-want-to-live way, not the back-to-my-place-for-a-drink way. You know, you’re not the first injured person I’ve handled. Don’t need to be so uptight.”

She was responding as he closed the door. Grabbing his coffee from the roof, he leaned against his car and took a giant gulp. With another gulp warming him, he slid into the driver’s seat, the girls already chatting.

“So you are blind?” asked Lys, green-haired and with a heavy French accent. “Zat does not exactly make me feel safe.”

“Not blind. Just a flash burn,” Willow explained.

“That means she will be able to see in a few days. They are bandages, not eyepatches,” said Grace, a round-faced girl from somewhere in Africa.

“‘ow do you know?” asked Lys.

“We just covered eye injuries in one of my medical classes. Least favorite class so far.”

“Gonna be a doctor or nurse?” Willow asked.

“Doctor,” Grace replied, “if vampires stop interrupting me.”

“I ‘ave been training a few months,” said Lys. “‘aven’t seen a vampire yet. Pretty excited about zat.”

“I bet you are, Ghost World,” Dean muttered. He tossed a bag into the back seat. “Welcome to America. Gotcha some donuts.”

* * *

 

Willow had initially been disappointed to discover Dean, and only Dean, had come to pick her up. It made her feel forgotten, though that wasn’t a fair feeling. Her friends, including an unexpected Giles, had spent most of the previous day visiting her. But to her surprise, Dean’s presence began to grow on her. Instead of blaring his rock music, he told her cheesy jokes on the drive home, asking her opinion on which Xander would like most.

Grace and Lys, who hailed from Nairobi and Quebec respectively, contributed their own groaners. By the time they arrived home, their voices were comforting.

Willow had barely been in her room five minutes before a whiny English voice exclaimed, “Why do I have to watch her? I’m not a nurse.”

“Because you have to pitch in, Cardigan. This ain’t a hotel. Holler if you need something.”

“Hello,” Willow said, waving toward where she assumed the girl was standing. She kicked off her sneakers and stretched out in her bed, the familiar softness like a hug from a friend. “Sorry about this. You don’t have to stay in here. I just need someone within earshot. Just hand me my discman, and I should be good for a while.”

“I’m Annabelle,” said the girl, who sounded like she was sitting in the corner chair. “Mr. Giles picked me up in London a few days ago. Where are you from?”

“Oh, I’m not a Potential. I live here. I’m Willow.”

The girl’s breath caught. “You’re the _witch_.” Her words carried a tone of insult, of labeling for some later, darker purpose.

“I’m _a_ witch. I don’t think I’m fancy enough for the _The_.”

“Do you think you’re funny?” Her voice was short, cold.

“I was trying to be because _tense_. You’re all huffy, and it’s sort of all I can hear.”

“I don’t care if all you can hear is blood curdling screams. Wait, you’ve heard those, or did you kill that boy too quickly for him to respond?”

Willow’s blood ran cold. Of course, word had gotten around the Watcher community. How many of the girls knew? What had they been told? “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t I? I’ve been training to be the Slayer since I was nine-years-old. Disappointed cannot even begin to describe how the Council felt when they found out that not only had the pet witch of their rebel Slayer killed a man, but that Buffy let her live. Why on Earth should Buffy do the job she’s been slated by fate to do and actually protect people?”

“It wasn’t like that!”

She heard the girl rise to her feet, her voice getting closer as she approached the bed. “That’s your defense? I visited the Council often. I’ve read their records on this Slayer, on you. You do what you want, consequences be damned. Now we have an ancient evil after us, and I’m fairly certain you lot did something to provoke it.”

There were footsteps in the hall. “Hey! What the hell are you doing?” Dean barked. Quick footsteps on the carpet. Shuffling. Annabelle squealed. “Get your ass down stairs!” He yelled.

Willow panted and clutched her bedspread. “Dean? What’s going on?”

He stook a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “Want some water, Willow? Music?” He was doing his best to mask the anger in his voice.

“Uh, both sound good.”

There was rustling at her desk where her discman was sitting. “Vertical Horizon? Really? Here’s your crappy music. I’ll be back in a minute with some water.”

She could hear him tapping his fingers on the doorway. Thinking? Staring? “Willow, keep your bedroom door locked.”

* * *

 

Buffy stood up at her desk, feeling her muscles and their tension knots roll and stretch. For not even being noon, she felt like she’d been up for a week. The morning had been a typhoon of strangers clamoring for a hot shower and breakfast. There hadn’t been enough time to swing by Dean’s for a shower. Thankfully, Xander had given her a ride to work, stopping for bagels and coffee, both of which she wolfed down in the car.

Once at work, she talked with three students with holiday problems – one of which was worried he wouldn’t be getting the car he “deserved” – stole some blank forms for Dean to forge transfer records with, and helped the secretary redecorate the Christmas tree some students had covered in pornography. And every movement had been spent under the curious eye of Principal Wood.

It was only a few minutes before lunch, so Buffy decided to skip studying for her final and meet Sam early. She opened the library door to see a line of students with armloads of books swamping the checkout counter.

“Wow, it’s like you’re giving ‘em away.”

“Kind of the idea,” he said as he stamped return cards. “Research is on my desk.”

“I was looking forward to more research,” Buffy muttered as she slipped into Sam’s office.

Other than the piles of books, the room had little decoration – a large map of California, a school calendar featuring pictures of the building at its least bloody angles, and a withering plant. The small window looked out on a charming copse of dead palm trees.

Moving Sam’s cold coffee out of the way, Buffy sat down with her pasta salad and mild enthusiasm. They had looked at all of their paltry references and come up empty. Nothing on the First. No clues on how to find and fix Spike. No tips on how to organize a gaggle of teenagers so everyone could get a hot shower.

An unfamiliar blue book caught her eye. It was small, only slightly overflowing her hand, and old, the gold embossed Greek lettering faded. She opened to a page marked with folded notebook paper, on it Sam’s writing:

_VESSELS 1. vampires, 2. witches, 3. slayer_

The bell rang, and Sam ducked in, the desire to be home clear on his face. “Don’t let the kids get you down, Sam. There’s _plenty_ to be down about otherwise.”

He plopped down in a nearby chair and practically inhaled his sandwich. “You think Willow’s home yet?” he asked after a minute.

“Yeah, Dean said he’d get her right after he picked up the Potentials at the bus station.”

“Shit. How many people are going to be at your house tonight?”

“Let’s think about something more manageable, like research,” she said holding up the blue book.

“That’s something else,” Sam said, snatching the book from her hand, an anxious look on his face.

“Well, what is it? It said something about Slayers and vessels?”

“I’m just doing extra research for me on the whole Slayer story, you know, with the Potentials here and all.”

Before she could probe deeper, a familiar voice purred from behind her.

“Thought I’d find you here.” Principal Wood leaned in the doorway with his hands in his pockets, looking quite coolly handsome, as if he wasn’t a complete creep. Buffy wondered if he was hiding a weapon or simply more blood on his hands.

“You are certainly good at finding me,” Buffy mumbled.

Sam rose to his full height, his back straight, shoulders back, stance firm. Only by slipping his hands in his pockets did he manage to look like he wasn’t aching for a fight.

“Did you need something? I’ve already turned in next quarter’s purchasing request.” He said it smoothly, but anyone with ears could hear an ass-beating in his tone.

“I’m actually here to see Miss Summers.” Principal Wood met Sam’s gaze. He was tall, nearly as tall as Sam, and even through the layers of his suit, it was evident he worked out. A fight wouldn’t be quick or clean.

“Let’s talk out here,” Buffy said, leading Wood away from the standoff to the history section. “Is this about Dawn? Did she fall down again?”

“No, I just wanted to say I’m glad you’re feeling better, and I missed you at the dance Saturday.” Having found his secret file, his smile made her skin crawl. What was the want flickering in his eyes?

“I’m sure those kids could cha cha slide without me.”

“If only their dancing was that advanced. Anyway, since I couldn’t talk you into spending Saturday with me supervising the punch bowl, I thought maybe a nice quiet dinner would be more your speed.” He gave her a smile like he’d been rehearsing this conversation the entire weekend. “Buffy, do you like Italian? ”

“Oh.” Relief surged through her followed by annoyance. Wood was a simple, obsessed stalker, the perfect upright citizen to be helming Sunnydale High. Having been stalked by Spike, she knew this could get ugly in a hurry.

“That was kind of the opposite of the response I was looking for. Is this because you’re not dating Mr. Winchester?”

“I wasn’t lying to you. I’m dating _Dean_ Winchester, Sam’s brother.” She hoped that would prevent him from lashing out at Sam at least.

Wood’s dark eyes widened, his face awash with embarrassment. He took a couple steps back, bumping into a bookcase and knocking a few volumes to the floor. “Oh, my apologies! I’m going to go hide in my office now, and let’s maybe pretend we never had this conversation?”

* * *

 

With the assistance of the Winchesters, Buffy took the jet-lagged Potentials out for their first Slayer training session that evening, both to give them some experience and get her mind focused on problems she could solve. Trouble was with the distraction of two hot guys, the language barrier, and Annabelle’s constant questions, no one was focused on anything she was saying.

The grave she was hoping would hold their first vampire, a former elderly man, was already empty. “And sometimes they rise before you can get there.”

Immediately a high-pitched British voice asked, “You just find suspicious deaths in the paper and wait for the vampires to rise? You don’t patrol? Save people?”

“Hey, calm down, Cardigan,” Dean snapped.

Buffy crossed her arms and glared. “Of course, I patrol. Of course, I save people. Do you want to go find a nest, Annabelle? I could throw you in and see how you fare.”

The girl turned red and puffed out her cheeks.

“I do not think she meant it as a challenge, Buffy,” said Keisha, a sixteen-year-old with a thoughtful face, who had arrived from Atlanta that afternoon. The dossier Giles had prepared on her recommended Buffy give her special attention, but so far she found Keisha difficult to read.

“We wanna see action,” added Dani, twirling a stake between her fingers. Buffy got the sense Dani, in training since her early teens, couldn’t wait to be the next Slayer. She knew the moves but possessed little in the way of leadership skills.

“Fine. You want action. I’ll show you action.”

She couldn’t show them action. Only two of the ten girls had more than a year of combat training. Three of them had not been exposed to the supernatural world at all. When she’d told the girls they were going out tonight to kill a vampire, Cloé had started silently crying into her teddy bear.

It was a few minutes and a lot of pounding before Clem, in full rhinestone cowboy gear, opened the door to his crypt and greeted the Slayer with a warm hug. “Hey there, Buffy! Who are your friends?”

Naomi – freckle-faced and sweet from a nowhere town – gave an uncertain but polite wave. Cloé clung to Sam’s arm while he translated for Leticia, barely awake enough after her long flight from the Philippines to register the demon in front of her. Most of them stood still and slack-jawed.

“Clem, these are potential Slayers. Girls, this is Clem.”

“Are you telling me,” griped Annabelle, “that you are actually on friendly terms with a _demon_?”

“Shut up!” Lys hissed.

“Well, I happen to think of myself as a friendly guy,” replied Clem, extending his hand. Annabelle turned up her nose at him and dipped back to the edge of the crowd. “Okay then. Buffy, it’s nice to see you, but I’m sorry I can’t really entertain right now. I’m getting ready to meet some buddies for line-dancing.”

“It will only take a minute, I promise. This is their first night out, and they want ‘action.’”

The demon smiled, exposing his fangs. “Newbies!”

“Lesson one, ladies: Not all creatures of the night are out to get you.”

“‘Ow can you tell?” asked Molly, leaning in.

“You can’t. Being a Slayer isn’t just about weapons training and quick reflexes. It’s also about instinct and good decision making. That’s part of why you need to do research. If you go all half-cocked killing everything in sight, you’ll have no allies, no intel, and no advantage when it comes to tackling the Big Bads. Now let’s move on to lesson two. Clem, you mind showing them that thing you can do?”

“If it helps!” Clem took off his white cowboy hat, and the flaps around his face peeled back, hissing tentacles shooting forth from his glistening red insides. The girls screamed, and to Buffy’s amusement, even the Winchesters jumped back in disgust.

“Thanks, Clem. Enjoy your dancing.”

The monster closed his face, replaced his hat, and gave her two thumbs up. “Anytime, Buffy. Hey, you wanna get some coffee and catch up?”

“Sounds great.”

“What was the point of that?” snapped Dani once Clem had returned to his crypt.

A couple girls snickered behind their hands, delighted to see Dani ruffled.

“The point is that not everything that’s unfamiliar should be killed, and not everything that’s seemingly benign should be ignored. We have an empty grave on our hands. What does that mean?”

The girls looked at each other for answers.Grace raised her hand. “An empty grave would mean that there is a vampire on the loose.”

“Grace gets an A for the night. Even though this vampire will look like an old man, that doesn’t mean he can’t hurt you. We need to be on the –”

Screaming cut her off. Dean bolted toward it while she worked her way around the confused knot of girls. An elderly vampire was biting the neck of a girl in a cardigan.

* * *

 

“We have a crisis!” cried Andrew, waving around an empty paper plate. “Even though I said I don’t like pepperoni, we ordered a cheese, a supreme, and a pepperoni. Now all the cheese is gone, and I’m still hungry.”

The Scoobies gathered around the dining room table kept their noses buried in the old books and letters scattered about. “I’m crying you a river over your woes. Now sit down and help,” said Xander.

“Why don’t we just lock him up again?” Anya asked, taking a bite of cheese pizza.

“Because I always get stuck with bathroom duty,” Xander explained. “It’s not like he has anywhere to run.”

Giles dropped another half dozen books on the table. Andrew and Dawn each took new volumes from the pile.

Anya scowled. “I would have thought that the upside of no Watcher’s Council meant fewer books. Fewer books, less research. Less research, fewer nightmares about taking a pop quiz in my underwear.”

“Yes, the ideal situation is having no idea what’s going on,” said Giles, opening his notes.

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Anya lamented.

“I like research,” said Dawn, not looking up from her book.

“More than homework apparently,” said Xander. “Rumor is you have a final to study for.”

The girl shrugged.

Anya continued. “I would have thought with all the Potentials in the house, we could have passed some of the boring off on them.”

Giles sighed. “They can learn research skills anywhere. They are here to be under Buffy’s tutelage, to gain more of a sense of what awaits them.”

“Finish your sentence.” Dawn spoke through gritted teeth. Her face was stone, but already tears were forming. “‘What awaits them’ when Buffy dies. Isn’t that the whole story?”

“Dawn–”

“Have you listened to them? All they can talk about is how excited they are to be superheroes. They criticize her non-stop. They can’t wait for her to –” Her voice caught in her throat, and she bit her lips, holding in the dark word. She pushed away from the table. “I need a break. I’ll be studying in Willow’s room if anyone needs me. Not that anyone ever needs me,” she grumbled as she trudged up the stairs.

“She still mad about being left behind?” Anya asked.

“It’s the story of Dawn.”

“I wanted to go, too,” Andrew added. “Watch Buffy do her thing, blonde hair flowing, watching Sam and Dean as they–”

“Difficult as it may be for Dawn to accept, Buffy has a role to play, training to do,” said Giles. “No doubt we all want Buffy to be the Slayer forever, but we cannot confuse our desires with reality.”

Everyone tried to ignore his words dangling ugly and close, but no amount of page-turning or note-scratching could change the fact that one of the Potentials was going to be the next Slayer. It wasn’t going to happen today, but it was going to happen.

“Hey guys, I think I found something,” said Andrew. He passed a fat brown book to Giles and pointed at an illuminated page. At the bottom of the page were twisted, blinded men in robes. “Do they look Bringery to anyone else?”

“It’s a poem. Sumerian.” Giles traced the words with his fingers, his lips moving as he translated in his head. “Roughly, it says since the Bringers sold themselves to evil, nothing can grow under their feet.” He pointed to the bright flowered border, which turned brown above and below them.

“So they’re bad gardeners?” Andrew asked.

“Poor horticulture is one of the lesser known signs of the end times,” said Xander.

Anya rolled her eyes. “How is this helpful? Do we just knock on every door in town and ask people about their water and fertilizer routines?”

Before anyone could answer, Dawn came running down the stairs with her cell phone in hand. “Buffy called. One of the girls got bit!”

* * *

 

As soon as they arrived back at the house, all of the adults, plus Grace, rushed upstairs with Annabelle. The rest of the Potentials joined Dawn waiting in the living room for the chaos to die down.

Soon, Cloé’s silent tears turned into racking sobs. Naomi squeezed onto the couch beside her and gave her a big hug. Settling the crying girl’s face against her chest, Naomi began to hum “Amazing Grace.”

As Cloé’s sobs subsided, Dani chimed in. “For all Annabelle’s talk about training, she didn’t do a hell of a lot to fight that vamp off, did she?”

A pillow hit Dani in the face. “Wha–”

“Shut. Up,” said Keisha, calmly, with a finger raised in warning. “No one wants to hear about how great you are. That’s not helping Annabelle or Buffy. And you’re certainly not helping us.”

Three more pillows flew at Dani, eliciting a small grin from Cloé.

“You know, it’s okay to be scared,” Dawn announced to the room.

“I woz not scared,” said Lys. “It is ‘ard to be frightened by anyone wearing fringe.”

“I almost peed when that demon did that thing with his face!” Naomi exclaimed before turning beet red. “I didn’t though.”

“‘E seemed nice enough,” Molly added. “Clem was it?”

A big smile burst across Dawn’s face. “Oh, you guys met Clem?! He’s super nice. He watches me sometimes.”

“Watches?” asked Wook, a laconic girl from South Korea.

With that, Dawn’s smile disappeared. “Tonight was scary – and totally get the tears out – but I know you’ll all be safe here. I know, because I’ve been the Slayer’s sister since she was called. And what better way to jerk the Slayer around than to grab her not-at-all-special little sister?”

They all leaned in, hanging on her every word. As much as some of them annoyed Dawn by treating this like an adventure, she recognized the terror in their eyes.

“Look, Buffy can be bossy and sometimes she doesn’t listen. She’s self-righteous and in charge, but that’s because she has to be. If she wasn’t, I’d be dead. So I know listening to her is less fun than Algebra, but learn everything you can for the sake of your sisters and brothers, for your parents. It’s not just the world you’ll be saving.”

Some of the girls had gone pale as they comprehended this new threat, and Dawn worried that she’d said too much. “Do you guys like chocolate? I keep a stash hidden from Buffy if you’re interested.”

With that invitation, the girls followed Dawn to her room.

* * *

 

After bandaging up Annabelle, Buffy and Giles retreated to the bench in the corner of her backyard to discuss her disaster of a training session. She breathed in her chamomile tea as she watched the girls mill about her lit house, reminding herself over and over again that they were terrified. But they were still annoying.

“Giles, they wouldn’t listen to me at all! Molly couldn’t stop giggling over two _very taken_ adult men. Cloé is a trembling fear-ball. Dani and Lys kept wandering off on their own. Annabelle would not stop second-guessing everything I had to say, and her bruised ego is the whole reason she was bitten in the first place! You are so lucky you just had me to deal with.”

He covered his face with his mug, muttering, “Quite.”

“You should have seen them when Dean staked the vamp that grabbed Miss Mouthy, which I totally would have done if I’d been on that side of the herd. You’d think I’d hadn’t just been telling them all of this stuff for an hour. You’d think I didn’t have years of slaying under my belt. You’d think they were here for Dean and Sam to protect them, not me.”

“All of them reacted that way?”

Buffy pursed her lips recalling the incident. Maybe it had only been a few voices, but it was enough to bother her. “Felt like all of them.”

“The Watchers’ diaries often spoke of the difficulty of training a new Slayer. Several of the young women chosen through the years were simply unable to grasp the idea that they had authority, that they did not need someone, a man in particular, to save them.”

She pictured girls in petticoats and corsets fainting and dying on their first night as Slayers.

“Why did you take the Winchesters with you?” Giles asked.

The answer pressed out a sigh. “You haven’t seen them fight, but they’re really good. They just sort of go into automatic, like how you can’t forget how to ride a bike. I don’t know if they could win against a vampire like Spike, but the Bringers wouldn’t have a prayer. If they pray, that is. I just kinda assumed with the whole monk vibe.”

“You were concerned they might have shown up tonight?”

“Why wouldn’t I be? They already broke into my house and kidnapped Spike for God knows what reason. Their whole mission is to kill the Potentials, and I happen to be hosting a victim party in the graveyard. You see how I’m sitting? So duck-like.”

Giles looked at her with soft eyes and a small smile. “Even if this were merely a training camp, the next few weeks wouldn’t be easy. The Council filled the head of every Watcher with stories about duty and discipline, but when I met you, none of their methods worked.”

“I don’t think the Council ever met a teenage girl,” Buffy said pulling her coat tighter around her.

“Not an unfair assessment; however, you are far from average, my dear. I have had the distinct pleasure of watching you grow up from a unique girl into the strong woman before me. If anyone can train this lot and keep them alive, it’s Buffy Summers.”

She bit the inside of her lip to keep from crying. Even when she did everything wrong, he still believed in her. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“That’s good, seeing as I’m picking up at least half a dozen more girls this weekend.”

* * *

 

_It looks like a mask from one of the better costume shops_. Spike tried to focus on anything other than the feeling of his intestines being removed. The closest thing was the creature the visage of Buffy kept calling a vampire. Between its grey skin, jagged fangs, reptilian eyes, and bald pate, it struck Spike as a caricature of a vampire, the sort of creature spoken about by supposed good people who don’t want to imagine the passion and lust tied in to actually being a vampire.

The image of Buffy crouched by his face, her eyes half open, her lips full and soft. She waved a finger over his face and touched his nose, only her non-corporeal finger slipped through, a low tingle like a mild shock. “I had such high hopes for you, Spike. You were the one, my right hand giddy on the pain of humans.”

“Wrong number, love.”

“The demon in you wants to help me. I can see it practically worshiping me. It’s that dirty little soul mucking things up.”

“Sod off.” He gritted his teeth. It felt like the grey-skinned monster was poking pins in his bowels.

“This is fun, though,” said Buffy’s image, stepping back to better survey what her pet monster was doing. “A human would have died by now, but you, you just keep growing back. We could do this forever. Unless you don’t feel like playing anymore, then all you have to do is say ‘Winchester.’”

* * *

 

As his fingers dug into her, she bit her tongue and pressed her face into the pillow. “Your shoulders are like rocks,” Dean said as he massaged Buffy’s back.

“After tonight’s disaster, do you expect me to be goo girl?”

“That sounds like the world’s lamest superhero. Goo Girl! She makes villains feel sticky!” he said in a terrible old timey radio host voice. “Supergirly could kick Goo Girl’s ass.” He skimmed his warm, soft lips over her neck, slipped his hands under her pajamas to tease her skin.

She rolled over as he tugged at her shirt, his half-closed eyes and freckled cheeks inches away. She wanted to kiss him, slip her tongue into his mouth while he slipped into her, but she didn’t deserve it. “Sorry, babe. I’m not in the mood.”

Pulling her shirt back down, he curled his body around hers and asked, “Still upset about Miss Stick-Up-Her-Ass?”

“She’s just one part of the Buffy Failure Show.” Giles had given her hope for tomorrow’s training session, smaller groups for graveyard patrol while Sam and Dean covered weapons training in the backyard. Still, she had a long way to climb after Annabelle’s attack.

“It wasn’t that bad. It’s not like anyone died.”

“That’s your yardstick of success?” Images of Dean as a child watching his baby brother popped to her mind – candy for dinner, porn on the TV, and no one died.

“A hell of a lotta hunters die their first time out. So a girl got bit; so what? At least now they all know to take this seriously. Couple of ‘em ‘bout talked my ear off today about how awesome they thought being the Slayer would be.”

“What did you tell them?”

“That the Slayer’s awesome because she’s Buffy Summers.”

The idea that anyone would envy her position made a laugh bubble in her throat. She could hear a group of girls in the bathroom talking and fighting for mirror space. _They can have my life._ Dean turned off the bedside light and laced his fingers with hers in the dark. _Some of it._

She slid into his arms, her head on his chest, her private cocoon from which she’d be reborn come morning. Bloodied know-it-alls, boy-crazy dreamers, sniveling children, all of those things faded from her memory. “What did I do to deserve you?”

“I don’t know. Must’ve been pretty shitty.”

They laid in the dark, listening to the buzz of the house as they pretended sleep would arrive. One by one, the girls settled in downstairs. Eventually, Giles’ muffled snoring leaked into the hall. For a moment, an hour, all Buffy could hear was the beating of Dean’s heart. Then a wave of voices rose from the living room, and feet pounded up the stairs. Her bedroom door burst open, and Molly gasped, “Annabelle’s missing!”

* * *

 

By the time Buffy and Dean finished checking the upstairs, rousing the rest of the house, and joined everyone in the living room, the girls were having a full meltdown.

“Shut up!” Dean bellowed, silencing the cacophony.

“Who saw her last?” asked Buffy, scanning the crowd. Immediately, four girls started talking over each other.

“Who noticed she was gone?” Dean asked, his voice easily overpowering all of them.

“I did,” said Grace. “I thought I should stay near her since she was hurt. She didn’t want to talk to anyone and laid down to sleep first. I woke up maybe twenty minutes ago and noticed she was missing.”

“She wasn’t in the basement with me,” Andrew added.

“I-I saw her leave,” squeaked Naomi. “I couldn’t sleep. She put a bunch of stuff in her bag. I thought she was going to the bathroom.”

Buffy ran her hands through her messy hair. “Alright, girls, Willow, Dawn, stay here in case she comes back. Giles, Dean, and I will go look for her.”

Bus station, hospital, taxi companies. Dean slipped on jeans and a henley as he ran through a list of places a scared, homesick twenty-something may go for comfort. Yes, the girl was embarrassed and upset, but she knew better than most what was out there.

Downstairs, he, Buffy and Giles were rushing through plans of where to look when Naomi shouted, “Found her!” She was looking out the front door where she’d just flipped on the porch light.

“Hang on!” Dean snapped, but Naomi walked out on the porch anyway.

“Annabelle, you had us all –” She stopped, her face twisted in horror, and released a blood-curdling scream.

Buffy rushed outside to pull the shocked girl in. Annabelle sat perfectly still, leaning against a column on the porch, pea coat on and knapsack by her side. Dean grabbed his gun and crept outside, worried she was the bait for a trap, but the night was as still as she was. The girl was a faint shade of blue, her eyes clouded over. Blood dripped down her sweater from the shredded area where her throat had been. It looked to Dean exactly like the vampire bites from home. Painted in blood on the front door was the word _BROTHERS_.


End file.
